WHAT THE DOG DID ßy IAN FRAZIER I CAME home the other day and my Saint Bernard, Tiffany, had a really guilty expression on her face, with her ears all hanging down. I got a hunch. I went into the living room, and there were all the cushions on the floor, and dog hairs allover the davenport. She knows she's not supposed to be up there. I said, "Come here, you!" and I whacked her with a rolled-up newspaper. She knew she had it coming. She went out in the mud room and lay down with her head right on the floor while I cleaned up the mess she'd made. Fi- nally, I figured she'd had enough, so I said, "Come on, girl, you're a good dog now." I went to give her a Liv-a- Snap, and the next thing I knew she wagged her tail so hard she knocked a full ashtray right off the kitchen table! A NOTE ON rHE AU1:'HOR: Ian Fra- zier is a writer who soaks up experi- ence like a sponge. He experiences life as vividly and ad} ectivally as he writes about it. His appetite for life is as large as the man himself, or even sOlnewhat larger, since I an Frazier is of average size and his appetite for life is way above average. He has been embracing all of experience since he was eleven years old, when he began riding his bike to school and so escaped the crushing, stultifying influence of his parents . He spent his pre-teen years travelling, hunting, and fishing as a protégé of novelist Ernest Heming- wa_v, wholn he later broke wIth when he noticed that the older writer contin- ually addressed hiln as "Daughter." N ow in his mid-thirties, a mature 'Zoriter who has triulnphantly found his own voice, he relnains (parddoxically) very lnuch a child in many ways. He has that type of courage which one finds so rarely in an adult in our soci- ety, and that is the courage to play. It's been said that the eminent student of the human lnind Carl lung abandoned his career and his responsibilities in his sixties and spent a year building sand castles on the beach; that would be as nothing to I an Frazier. He is just constantly playing. Sometimes he'll give oranges to people on the subway. Sometimes he'll pull a chair out from under a friend when that friend is about to sit down. Sometilnes he'll send people unnecessary packages Air Ex- I ALIA RIDIONALE ",Il I\ ...,. t j þ .. ' J \ .I' \ J ' \ J \ t' \ l I \ I, d I ! \ , I 'i: II âi& ,.,.' I t l I II" ,; . Iff t \ ' ,1 I \ 'h \ I fIiíí:t \ ' t \.. -, "I' j III " I , -.... I . ..-= _ '> ;:it':?' I ... ,,-.. ...... ...-- . "", - -; -' . -- I r __ - ---=.-ã ' , --;:::: I\, press, lnaking sure that the package will arrive at an incon7.lenient time He is blessed with a fractured vision, and a conviction that thr world is mad. In spite of that (or perhaps because of that), he doesn't judge another felLou until he has walked around for a while in that fellow's shoes. And not just guys' shoes-solnetimes he walks around in ladies' shoes, too. ankle- straps, Mary lanes, hlgh heels, flats, and sling-backs. And all the people coming around his apartment trying to get their shoes back, and the con- fusion, the argu1"nents-unpleasant, perhaps, but all part of a writer's life. Any experlence that happens, it doesn't just have to be a good experi- ence, and-BAM-Ian Frazier will convert it to writing of some kind. Say he's flying froln Ne'Zl.. York to Mi- amz and his plane has a layover at a Southern airport like Atlanta. Within a matter of minutes, he'll be writing a postcard, the scent of heliotrope and verbena and honeysuckle pervading his prose, and he 'Zvill be infused 7))lth 45 a trenzel/dolls sense of place. Or, to glve an.other exalnple, sa.y he's sitting around at a party and SOl'neone puts an old song on the record-player and the song reminds hZ1"n of eighth grade. Suddenl)' it 'Zeill be as if he actually is in eighth grade for a while in his llÛnd. Then n aybr he'll notice a Fed- ders air-conditioner in the 'UJindou next to where he's sitting and he'll be reminded of a Fedders air-condi- tioner he owned in 1975 that broke down once in the hottest part of the sumlner Then something else will brzng another 1"nelnory to rnilld and off he'll go again. He'll be in the same roonl with you and .vet not there, all at the same ti,ne. His 'lvriting shows evidence of the strong znfluence of Sardou, Mazo de la Roche, and 1 uanita Bartlett. SOllIe critics ha've called hin the white Paul Laurence Dunbar He lives in Paris, France, with eight mistresses, one of wh01n is a forlner Miss Universe runner- up. Everyone he has ever l1Iet is conz- pletely crazy about hlln. l I r . " r' '. ) . ---- "- ---, ----- ' / I fJ. f I, \ . n . - - ,,;, I' l{ , J I t! It . ........ " I' "We want a no-cobblestone itinerary."